The Eternal Party
Newsletter 2026-05-14
It’s always the Triple Birthday party. At any given moment, I’m either preparing for it, throwing it, or dealing with the aftermath. It’s not so much a birthday as a birth year, or at least a birth four to six months. This week, I sent out the Facebook invite for this year’s party. That used to be the website that made everything official, whether it was a relationship, a new job, or a new kid. Regardless of what the birth certificate said, that baby wasn’t legally yours until you claimed them on your timeline. That was in the good old days. Now, Facebook is mostly AI slop, foreign bots, and old people who are past the point where they can learn to use a newer, better website. That last group is me. I’m not sending out birthday party invites on TikTok, ClickClack, or any other onomatopoeia. Using ancient technology like Facebook to handle invitations skews the guest list. The age of the invitees ranges from sixty-five to long dead. Not that we’d ever discriminate. Some skeletons really know how to party. While I think that’s awesome, it’s not necessarily how three teen or almost-teen girls want to celebrate their big day. That’s why my soon-to-be sixteen-year-old, Betsy, has an additional plan. I might listen to her. If I stuck to my usual itinerary, the disappointment, like the never-ending party prep and tear-down, might last for the rest of their lives. I set out to make them memories. I never said they’d be good ones.
Betsy has valid reasons for changing my itinerary. This is a big year for her. She’s about to turn sixteen. She already has a car, by which I mean Lola and I have three and she can drive the one that would cost us the least to repair or replace. Now she just needs a license. Thanks to quirks in Indiana’s driving laws, she can get that life-changing piece of plastic on July 1st. It will be a big day for her and a joyous one for me. The first time I tell her to drive herself to practice, I’ll learn whether or not it’s really possible to die of happiness. Age sixteen is important enough for an expanded guest list. Betsy’s godparents, my and Lola’s college friends Winston and Virginia, plan to drive in from St. Louis. That’s exciting, but she wants even more. She humbly requested a second celebration with friends her own age. At a certain point, kids are less entertained and more embarrassed by their elders. After fifteen consecutive birthday parties with family and family friends, I suppose we can accommodate that request, but only if it’s limited to once per childhood.
In junior high, Betsy and her friends had a birthday sleepover circuit. They went from one house to the next weekend after weekend for a three month stretch that covered everyone’s big days. Notably, that rotation didn’t include my house. My children are for export only. The tradition faded as the kids got older and more involved in high school activities, but they still hold occasional birthday events when their schedules line up. Besides sleepovers, they now go out to restaurants and escape rooms. Two of those three activities sound fine. I prefer that other people’s kids return to their own homes with all due expedience, ideally while taking my own children with them. As a one-off, though, I suppose she can have all of her friends spend the night. The problem is it will become a four-off when the other three girls request birthday sleepovers when they turn sixteen. Kindness always has consequences. It’s a shame I never learned to say no.
While Betsy plots out her side quest, I need to continue preparations for the main event. The Triple Birthday Party requires triple gifts. So far, Lola and I haven’t even purchased a third of that amount. We’re lucky we’re not at a multiplier of zero. I’m sure other people will bring the classics. There will be Legos, candy, and a growing number of gift cards and cards stuffed with cash as the girls get older and harder to buy for. Lola and I are struggling with that now. Only Lucy, who is turning twelve, still wants the staples of childhood. She regularly updates her Amazon wish list. It’s good to keep major corporations in the loop on your materialistic hopes and dreams.
Mae is more wishy-washy. She knows she wants crafts, but she doesn’t know which ones. She suggested that everyone could just give her gift cards to the craft store so she could go on an epic shopping spree at a future date. The stock price of Michael’s depends on it. I asked her for more options. She and Betsy had a brainstorming session/wrestling match while browsing the internet. That’s not how I would do my best thinking, but I can’t question the results. Mae’s Amazon wish list is now longer than some novels.
Betsy’s tastes are more eclectic. I was devastated to hear that she was no longer into geese and ducks, which were her obsession for a few years. That was in addition to anything with a pattern of tiny tomatoes, which I’m told never goes out of style. I asked if the end of her goose obsession meant she no longer wanted a porch goose. She was aghast that I would even ask. She would still love a concrete water fowl, even though she isn’t a middle aged woman with a house of her own. Apparently dressing up concrete facsimiles of mean birds is fun for all ages. The main problem is I have no idea how much they cost. Real porch geese weigh as much as a player piano and can only be purchased at outdoor nurseries where hundreds of random cement yard ornaments are lined up in rows like the Terracotta Army. My mom is checking out just such a place in my home town, but I suspect she’ll discover that such fine items are well outside our triple gift budget. As an alternative, maybe Betsy will accept me taking her and her friends to an escape room as a gift. It’s equally likely that would hit too close to home. She wants to go away to live on campus for college while I want her to commute from home. Her current bedroom is a real life escape room that she’s trying to get out of by any means necessary. She may prefer the more whimsical, metaphorical escape of dressing up a stone goose. Perhaps I can find a mini one under our gift limit.
Given how far behind we are on buying gifts, it’s good that Lola and I have extra time this year. This will be the latest we’ve ever hosted the event. It will be two days after Lucy’s birthday on the very outer edge of the birthday window. It gives us extra days to procrastinate. No matter how much time we have, we’ll still likely depend on two-day shipping at the last possible moment. That’s only if we go through major retailers. If we go for hard-to-find, out-of-production items for a certain teenager, shipping could take a few weeks or longer depending on which wooden galleon the seller charters. The tiny tomato-print wallet we got for Betsy for Christmas was delivered on the Mayflower. If my mom finds out that a porch goose is cheaper than I expect, it will be delivered by a Chevy Spark. That’s assuming the Spark weighs more than a goose. We’ll need a scale to know for sure. If it’s physically possible, my mom would totally deliver it. She’s the same woman who bought my dad a hundred-pound, fully painted Big Foot statue. He’ll keep it forever, both because he loves it and because it’s too heavy to ever throw away. My family creates lasting memories through sheer inconvenience.
We have other important traditions that must be upheld during the birthday season.
